In a 3GPP (The 3rd Generation Partnership Project) conference, an operator puts forward a concept of a narrowband terminal supporting a low bandwidth (such as: a bandwidth of 1.4M). Because a bandwidth supported by a narrowband terminal is low, a production cost of the terminal can be substantially reduced, so that the narrowband terminal has a good application prospect in an M2M (Machine to Machine, Internet of things).
However, in the prior art, there is still no good manner to support a narrowband terminal in retransmitting a message 3 in a random access process. The message 3 is data that is sent in a random access process by a terminal to a base station by using authorization information in a random access response when the terminal receives the random access response that is sent by the base station and is effective for the terminal.